Our marriage is a sham, don't you see? A sham!

So, where have I been lately? Playing a little game called Facade. I was also sick. Neither are particularly conducive to things like personal hygeine, so it's probably best most of you only experience me over the internet.

The premise behind Facade is that you're the longtime friend of Grace and Trip, two upwardly mobile young urbanites, and they've invited you over to their apartment for a few drinks. In the first scene of this "interactive drama," as the makers describe it, you're standing at the door to Grace and Trip's apartment, waiting to be let in. You can hear them arguing behind the door - a portentous beginning to what is essentially a cocktail party scripted by the writers of The War of the Roses.

So as the evening wears on and the background music swells ominously, Grace and Trip bicker, insinuate, and take passive-aggressivity to such stunning heights that I'm convinced if these people were to appear on the Dr. Phil show, his brain would spontaneously combust. Essentially, how you respond to their barbs and pointed questions will dictate how the evening will end.

You have to engage in a bit of suspension of belief while playing Facade - namely, the fact that anyone could actually be friends with the snivelly Trip and the icily repressed Grace for ten days, much less ten years. (Spoiler: it turns out you introduced them a decade earlier, in college. So this mess is all your fault, chief.) Then again, Facade is not exactly designed to be an enjoyable experience. It can be quite humbling to see all your tactics, from encouraging them to reveal their insecurities to chastising them for being self-absorbed twats, end in Grace storming huffily out of the apartment. Facade also gets you thinking about the level of emotional maturity and sincerity in your own relationships - which elevates it above Grand Theft Auto, I guess, unless you're a pimp. Honestly, I could someday see Facade being employed in marriage counselling sessions. Christopher Walken would be the counsellor, but I could still see it.

Anyways, after eventually realizing that the most appropriate response to this situation - shattering Trip's $95 martini glasses over the bar and shoving the jagged shards into their soulless hearts - is not possible, the game becomes somewhat tedious. There are only so many possible outcomes to the scenario, and while the game's ability to understand your questions is very impressive (there's none of this "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean!" bull patootie - if you say something odd, Grace and Trip will either stare at you like you've sprouted a third eyeball, or just blissfully keep on arguing) when compared to a real-life scenario it's understandably limited. But, if you want, you can continue delving into the vagaries of the human heart, becoming more and more wrapped up in the petty downward spiral that is Grace and Trip's marriage, ad infinitum.

Or, you can pretend you're a bloodthirsty pirate. Guess which I chose!